All Hail the New Marketing Overlord: Google!
As others have noted, if you think back on the fantasies of past civilizations you’ll find that most of them have become a reality in one way or another. The crystal ball that would show events in far away lands is cable news; the spherical shape was changed to accommodate the crawl at the bottom of the screen. The magic carpet once lusted for is, of course, now an airliner (the modern version is better, you get a free soda). Who could forget the horn that took down the walls of Jericho? Any country with nuclear weapons can not only take down city walls, it can also simultaneously smite enemies inside.
There is at least one ancient dream that is on the precipice of blossoming into reality: the ancient idea of an all-knowing oracle. In the past, kings and rulers yearned for an oracle to free them from the burdens of onerous leadership decisions. The idea was that one could ask the oracle anything at all and receive the correct answer. The formula for converting cubits to meters? The oracle knew. How would the subjects react to yet another tax increase so you could gild your favorite horse in pure platinum? The oracle understood all the implications. What is going to be the modern version of the oracle? Why, Google of course. Before you think “damn, this guy found a search engine and the internet, welcome to the last ten years!” there is more to it than that, at least there will be….
If Gbuy takes off
This is the most opportune moment to survey what Google will know about you and your habits. First Google will know what you are searching for, the company will know what your email says, what ads entice you into clicking and finally, to top all of it off, the company will know what you actually end up buying.
Taken separately, none of this is a big deal. Knowing what people are searching and serving up related ads is no reason for alarm. Scanning your e-mail and catching keywords like “mesothelioma lawyer” and displaying a related snippet in the margin is nothing to be concerned about. And, naturally, merely powering the actual transaction with Google is the smallest of matters.
The potentially troubling thing is that all that information is in the hands of one company. In the good old days, it wouldn’t matter. The sheer vastness of the data would prevent anyone from doing anything with it. Thing is that Google has a lot of computers and computers are very good at just this sort of task. A few algorithms and a couple of clock cycles later Google will know exactly what pushes your buttons. The company will know the wording that makes you buy something, where the ad should be placed to entice you into to purchasing and the price point you are willing to accept for an internet purchase.
Google will have all the info, but it will take marketers some time to digest. First they will focus on the most obvious ways to increase sales, but since a computer can sort like a warehouse full of Kelly temps hopped on twenty kilos of pure Columbian cocaine, they’ll soon stop just going after the low hanging fruit and hit any particular user with the ad that is likely to get the most response. Imagine, if you will, a plethora of ads for the same good or service each one tweaked to appeal to a different user.
The beauty of the situation from Google’s perspective is that all that information is given up voluntarily. The search engine prevailed by generating the best results with minimal interference of advertising. People flocked to G-Mail in droves to the point of individuals buying free invitations on for real money on eBay. The ads you click on, the products you actually buy all add up to the kind of information marketers will pay long green to get a chance to play with. The whole thing is a veritable cash bonanza for the fine individuals at Google.
And thus, by leveraging information freely given to them, Google will go from being the king of internet searches to a modern all knowing oracle of marketing. Bring on the offerings subservient retailers, Google has all the answers!
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Comments
But even Google many years from now they will not be able to handle the total weight of the internet for the net’s expansion rate is many factor faster than the expansion of G’s server farm capacities.
Then how on earth will individual PCs be able to manage the same task?
I’m not sure the ideal of the semantic web is to compile all the information on the internet. It is to bring useful sets of that information into a system more user-friendly to access, by a process of automatic categorisatoin/collation.
In my view the semantic web that can be offered to us by, for instance, Google is in some ways more flexible and useful than the “true” semantic web. Because through one portal you will have access to all the services and information you might need. But you don’t have to get rid of “surfing” the web, which is a system with its own valid uses in its own right. A ‘best of both worlds’ scenario, if you will.
This page from O’Reilly is enlightening. Two excerpts seem relevant here:
So what kind of thing will the Semantic Web provide? Amongst other things:
Finding information/services (search)
Metadata
An automation infrastructure
Annotation
Data mining opportunities
Although there are minor grumblings with Google, the majority are happy with it for Searching. And nobody lies awake at night worrying about a lack of consistent annotation functionality. The Semantic Web needs to prove what problem(s) it’s going to solve, and not just show that it can create pictures showing you that you know your friends.
Point three also suggests that, contrary to what you suggest, “Web 2.0” dynamic technologies are not in fact even relevant to the development of the semantic web, let alone moving us towards it. “No one really knows” when the SW will happen because there’s really no trace of its existence yet - except as analogous funcionality already provided by G/Y/V (though not, by any means, finished.)
how on earth will individual PCs be able to manage the same task. -Ben
You are being short-sighted, Ben. I thought you are more forward thinking in technology than most Mac faithfuls. Of course one individual computer can’t handle the metadata of the whole internet. The concept of the semantic web is much like your brain - think of one computer as a neuron. Countless of these computers will compose the “concept” of the semantic web [your mind with neurons?].
So, you are correct the semantic web is a “concept” with no concrete specification of its implementation. If I can quote his novel vision from the Wikipedia:
Tim Berners-Lee originally expressed the vision of the semantic web as follows:
I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize. (Berners-Lee, 1999)
There is nothing in this vision that enforces some kind of implementation. It is just that - a vision. We really don’t know when it will start and be completed. Is Google a precursor? It sure feels like it, but it doesn’t yet fulfill the computer will know where to get its metadata of information. Each person’s computers still relies on one source - Google’s server farms and its golden algorithms.
It is no wonder that Google does not like the premise of the semantic web. Google wants you to use her services for that is her bread-and-butter. Semantic web’s promise of making ALL computers communicate their metadata in one universal markup language is a potential destruction of Google as we know it today.
But who is to say that G or Y! will not adapt and really be the catalysts for this semantic web. Like I have said in the past, do not sit still in the present for the present is dynamic and fluid. New innovations and unheard-of technologies emerge from the labs each and every day. Trust me that today’s net innovations is not going to be there 10 or even 5 years into the future. For proof of that, go back in net history of just 6 years ago when Netscape and IE were burning the net frontierland with bustling of innovation. Some of these innovations will become the pillars of the newer technologies much like Javascript and HTML 1.0 of yesteryear.
Trust me that today’s net innovations is not going to be there 10 or even 5 years into the future -Me
When I say that I mean that current methods of doing things on the internet will be completely different 5-10 years down the road. Just look at how Google Maps (being a free API for any web developer to use) is changing the landscape of location finding and directing to the point that you can finally see that particular location from about a mile overhead with Google Earth at any time without actually being there. Both these services use the “Web 2.0” kind of technologies such as AJAX that combines elements of XML, Javascript, XHTML, DOM, etc.
I am not saying that Google is using AJAX or a similar proprietary solution, much like AJAX. But the end result is the same: interactive, intuitive, responsive UI served from afar. Now, that sounds like a M$-“killer” doesn’t it? Applications served through any browser that is AJAX-compatible (or similar method) will definitely have a destructive effects on M$‘s core business - OS and apps.
It is these kinds of emerging technologies that will fulfill Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of a net utopia-of-sort. It is mind-boggling now but wait about a decade and look back to this day you’ve read this article. You will be amazed…
Yes well I agree. As I said, analogous funcionality already provided by G/Y/V (though not, by any means, finished.)
I too await the happy day Microsoft becomes irrelevant in their current form